Investigating Elementary Teachers' Understanding, Beliefs, and Intentions toward STEM and Computational Thinking in Education

Abstract

This study attempted to investigate elementary school teachers' understandings, beliefs, and intentions toward STEM and Computational Thinking. We collected data through a survey of 16 teachers at one elementary school in Malang City, Indonesia. They represented a variety of subjects with diverse learning experiences. The survey took place after the respondents received a short training about STEM and Computational Thinking. Quantitative analysis showed that most elementary school teachers positively demonstrated Computational Thinking practices in their schools. Besides, they believed that Computational Thinking could help students think logically, structurally, and creatively, while STEM helped train students to be problem solvers in an analytical, critical, and practical way. In addition, most respondents intended to continue learning and applying STEM and Computational Thinking approaches in their learning design. Added to this, the participants' understanding of STEM and Computational Thinking also improved based on the results of the Wilcoxon test conducted on the pre-test and post-test. This study provides valuable information on the need for elementary teacher development programs, namely improving teachers' teaching skills based on STEM and Computational Thinking for preparing students with 21 st-century learning skills.